Random Math’s Better Together Program improves competition performance through collaborative learning
By Lynn Dai
Each Sunday evening, freshman Harish Loghashankar gathers with his teammates at the Random Math complex in Cupertino for 2-3 hours to discuss complex problems. These problems — which often rank among the most difficult USAJMO and USAMO questions — are often ones they wouldn’t be able to solve alone, but together, the team often succeeds in cracking a few.
Loghashankar and his teammates are part of Random Math’s “Better Together” program, which began last March. The program aims to help students improve their performance in both individual competitions like the AIME and USA(J)MO and team-based tournaments like the Stanford Math Tournament (SMT) and Harvard-MIT Math Tournament (HMMT).
By allowing students to work closely with each other, Better Together allows each student to improve by learning how to approach problems in new ways.
“I think [Better Together] is very useful in improving my performance in both individual and team-based contests, so I’m very glad I got to do it this year,” Loghashankar said.
Working through difficult problems with others has allowed him to learn different problem strategies, which have been applied to similar programs in multiple competitions, including individual tests like the AIME and USAJMO.
As a freshman in high school, Loghashankar is a five-time AIME qualifier and received an Honorable Mention for USAJMO, and placed 8th individually at the Caltech Math Meet. He first joined the Together Program last September to improve his competition performance. While he has been preparing for team-based competitions through informal practices for years now, he said he was excited to join the program and have a proper way to prepare for team tournaments.
A typical day in the program looks like this: students in the program are first split into groups of three to four, and everyone works on four challenging problems individually for the first hour. The second hour is filled with discussion amongst teammates, a process Loghashankar said “gave us all a much better understanding of the problem.”
Loghashankar recalls attacking a geometry problem in the Better Together program with angle-chasing; his teammate used a proof and construction-based approach, plotting points and lines to recognize patterns analogous to a parallelogram and similar triangles.
“I was intrigued by his method, I hadn't thought of drawing a near-perfect diagram and analyzing the figure to prove relationships,” he said. “That was one thing I've learned from people at the Better Together program that I probably wouldn't have learned elsewhere.”
Similarly, freshman Seabert Mao — a five-time AIME qualifier and USAJMO qualifier who ranked 6th place nationally in MathCounts — has improved his performance in proof-based individual contests through the program. Collaborating with his peers on difficult problems has also helped him learn how to explain his solution to his teammates effectively, a skill necessary for writing good proofs.
“In a proof contest, you need to be able to write down your solution and explain it to a person who doesn’t know what you’re talking about,” Mao said. “I think the Together program really helps you do that.”
Mao also notes that one big difference between the Together program and normal lecture classes is the amount of time given to solve each problem. In a typical lecture, teachers give students a variety of problems related to a concept, but students are hinted towards or given the solution to save time. However, in the Together program, Mao said that he “gets a lot of time to explore the problems himself and understand the motivation behind the solutions.”
Mao has been a student at Random Math for eight years and started attending the Better Together program in early 2024 in tandem with the Accelerator program and normal lectures. While the lectures and Accelerator program help build conceptual knowledge and problem-solving, the Together program helps apply these skills to a group setting similar to many competitions.
The Better Together Program also offers select discounts for students who have participated in previous math competitions. For example, Loghashankar received a discount for the program after participating in Mathcounts Nationals.
Additionally, students who place in the top 10 of each of the four grade categories at the Silicon Valley Math Tournament (SVMT) receive an 80% scholarship for the Together program. Students who place from 10-20 receive a 50% scholarship.
Random Math also offers scholarships to all need-based applicants, and all students are eligible for special awards including college scholarships. In the past two years, Random Math has ranked 1st individually in the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament (HMMT), top 10 overall in the Princeton University Mathematics Competition (PUMaC), and top 6 individually in the Stanford Math Tournament (SMT).
These scholarships, as well as the establishment of the Better Together program, all aim to maintain Random Math’s supportive community and expand it to a growing field of students interested in competitive math.
“The culture here is really important to performing well in competitions,” Loghashankar said. “At Random Math, it feels more like a family than at other programs, where you're just competing with the people around you. With the Better Together program, you're encouraged to work together and collaborate, and that feels a lot more interactive and friendly.
